Mark stood slowly. The transition seemed to take an enormous quantity of energy and up on his feet he looked lost.
‘That’s right, Marcus,’ said Jolyon, ‘you can fuck off now.’ He gestured at the door as he bridled on the bed. ‘And the rest of you can fuck off as well.’ Jolyon stabbed the joint into an ashtray. ‘I never get this place to myself. Can I never get even one single moment to myself?’
They all began to rise. Jack nearly said something but thought better of it and left the room behind Mark. They trooped off in a line, single file, and with Chad at the rear. Emilia peeled away and moved cautiously toward the bed on which Jolyon had spread himself.
Chad hesitated at the edge of the room.
‘It’s fine, Chad,’ said Emilia, ‘I can handle this one.’
Chad smiled, stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him.
XXXVII
XXXVII(i) If I was unduly harsh on Mark then perhaps it was because his laziness extended to the observance of rules. He was a sloppy believer in right and wrong. And why did it fall to me to enforce the rules? The others wanted the rules enforced but they all kept quiet, waiting for someone else to speak first.
I used to see the same sort of behaviour all the time before I shut myself away – on buses, in bars, on the street. A man, for example, shouting at a woman. The woman cowering, shrinking back from the fist being formed. And twenty or thirty bystanders shrinking back as well, looking to each other, hoping someone else would step in and do the right thing.
And that person always used to be me. Once upon a time. But the Game snatched away several parts of me. Perhaps life would have done so in any case but the Game got there first. And Chad got there first. And Death got there first.
XXXVII(ii) This morning my neighbour failed to look up even once from his crossword. My ex-wife is married to a tax attorney named Trip. Every time I pass a bum on the street he flashes me a don’t-come-hither look.
I have no other choice. There is something I must do. I can’t make it alone.
My evening routine steels me for the task ahead. I fill the whisky glass to the line in black Magic Marker, a third full. Two pink pills, two yellow, two blue. And then I leave my apartment as darkness is falling, my sternest test thus far, the East Village like a carnival parade every night.
I reach Avenue A where life throngs the streets, crowds buzzing between one drink and the next. Lines of girls move arm in arm like crabs, I have to step aside as they scuttle and slide up the sidewalk. Doorways disgorge their crowds like cats gagging fur balls. On the hood of a car there crouches a man in surf shorts bellowing, using his hands like a bullhorn. Paaaar-taaaay, he yells.
I try to recall what day of the week this is. Yes, a Monday, I seem to remember.
Baby steps.
XXXVII(iii) ACE bar sucks me into its blackness.
Whisky, I say, when eventually I squeeze through the crowd. The waitress narrows her eyes almost imperceptibly. No, I say, scratch that. Make it a beer, a Brooklyn.
Two fans spin beneath the pressed tin ceiling but don’t disperse the heat. The damp crowd quenches its thirst greedily. I notice there are fewer women than men, younger also. They wear early tans and tissuey dresses that hang from thin straps. My eyes settle on them one by one. But I don’t recognise a single face.
I miss the intimacy of women. I miss their warmth, their snakes of orchard scents.
The noise rises and falls. The pitch and roll of the place makes me feel seasick and I hold on tight to the edge of the bar.
The barmaid brings my beer and I have to shout to make myself heard. And a Scotch as well, I say. The cheapest, no ice.
XXXVII(iv) After an hour I drink a fourth or fifth whisky, a fourth or fifth beer, and I warm to the world. I look at the crowd and take to the rhythm of its chatter, like listening to crickets while the campfire crackles. And then through the crowd’s chinks I notice red numbers spinning on an LED. I stand taller at the bar. One of the displays spins zeros while a second rises, 50, 70, 170. I see a head bobbing up and down. Sometimes there follows the sound of cheers, sometimes groans. I sway from side to side and peer through the crowd. And then I see the source of everyone’s amusement. A skee-ball alley. Two skee-ball alleys and only one of them occupied.
I think of my training, of shadow boxing, sparring. Yes, if I don’t get back into the ring before Chad arrives, what hope do I have of beating him? I must keep climbing, keep on running those steps.
I down my whisky, stand up and push my way through the crowd. The man at the skee-ball alley throws his last ball. He has scored 480 points. His friends pat him on the back in an appreciative way.
I approach him and tap his shoulder. You want a game? I say, yelling to make myself heard.
XXXVII(v) And it is here that my memory of the night ends. I know only that I woke up alone and in my own bed, my head being hammered from inside to out.
Hangovers lend to me the most acute sense of my atomic structure. I feel the spaces in me, the lack of matter. I am particles and I hum, my whole body set in a gentle vibrato.
I lie in bed too long, until there remains barely enough time to complete my morning routine before noon arrives. I drink two of the day’s three allocated glasses of water and take almost my entire allotment of pills. I pull on my sneakers.
XXXVII(vi) Oh, Jolyon. I’m so wholeheartedly happy you came. You came back to find me. And you didn’t see me but that doesn’t matter. You were there, you made the effort, and that means something special to me.
You seemed to be having such a ball last night. You were rather the spectacle before the doorman threw you out. Up there on the pool table, calling out my name and declaring your everlasting love. It quite made a girl blush.
The declarations of love I will take (again) as drunken hyperbole. And although I see you have forgotten the pool table incident, I hope sincerely you still remember who I am. This cannot have slipped your mind a second time. To forget once may be regarded as a misfortune; to forget twice looks like carelessness!
Can we start all over again, Jolyon? I would love for our friendship to flourish afresh. Let us begin again as friends and take it from there. Hooray in anticipation of YES.
But first, however, I do have one teeny-weeny thing to ask of you. Just a few itsy-bitsy rules, no more mad rushing in. If you want me to finish your story there are just a few things I would ask of you. To read about what we did is already enough of a discomfiting experience. And some bare bones of structure might be good for us. Every friendship requires a structure, don’t you think? Even if most of the rules remain forever unseen.
So here are my rules.
(Is RULES a silly word? Perhaps, yes. OK, let’s call it a framework then. Yes, FRAMEWORK sounds so much nicer, something to which our fresh shoots might be able to cling.)
Jolyon will leave his apartment at 12 noon every day.
Jolyon will not then return until 2 p.m. or later.
Jolyon will ensure that the blind over the apartment’s kitchen window is lowered before he leaves.
All clocks in the apartment will always tell the time accurately.
The fridge will at all times remain reasonably stocked with French mineral water and Dr Pepper soda.
Jolyon will knock and then wait 30 seconds before entering his apartment at or after 2 p.m.